{"title":"Theorising Order in the Shadow of War. The Politics of International Legal Knowledge and the Justification of Force in Modernity","authors":"Hendrik Simon","doi":"10.1163/15718050-12340150","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nThe History of International Law lacks systematic studies on the link between legal scholars and practices of justifying war. This missing analytical link has for a long time given the impression that legal scholars describe ‘state practice’ in an ‘objective’, unpolitical way. Contradicting this impression, the article turns to the politics of legal scholars in the genesis of the modern war discourse. It reflects on the fateful entanglement of violence, law and politics, but nevertheless distinguishes between ‘objective’ and ‘political’ scholarship on the basis of Hans Kelsen’s work. Furthermore, the article illustrates the politicisability of legal scholars in selected historical cases of the ‘long 19th century’ (1789–1918). In all cases, two hearts pounded in lawyers’ chests: one scientific, the other political. As will be shown, the modern war discourse is shaped by a phenomenon that enables scholars to expand the intrinsic limits to the political instrumentalisation of law: ‘multi-normativity’.","PeriodicalId":43459,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","volume":"49 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2020-10-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL LAW","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15718050-12340150","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The History of International Law lacks systematic studies on the link between legal scholars and practices of justifying war. This missing analytical link has for a long time given the impression that legal scholars describe ‘state practice’ in an ‘objective’, unpolitical way. Contradicting this impression, the article turns to the politics of legal scholars in the genesis of the modern war discourse. It reflects on the fateful entanglement of violence, law and politics, but nevertheless distinguishes between ‘objective’ and ‘political’ scholarship on the basis of Hans Kelsen’s work. Furthermore, the article illustrates the politicisability of legal scholars in selected historical cases of the ‘long 19th century’ (1789–1918). In all cases, two hearts pounded in lawyers’ chests: one scientific, the other political. As will be shown, the modern war discourse is shaped by a phenomenon that enables scholars to expand the intrinsic limits to the political instrumentalisation of law: ‘multi-normativity’.
期刊介绍:
The object of the Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d"histoire du droit international is to contribute to the effort to make intelligible the international legal past, however varied and eccentric it may be, to stimulate interest in the whys, the whats and wheres of international legal development, without projecting present relationships upon the past, and to promote the application of a sense of proportion to the study of current international legal problems. The aim of the Journal is to open fields of inquiry, to enable new questions to be asked, to be awake to and always aware of the plurality of human civilizations and cultures, past and present.